Field of Schemes

December 31, 2004

Halos, by any other name

The Anaheim Angels name controversy looks to be headed for court. As you'll recall, new owner Arte Moreno wants to attract a broader fan base by renaming the team the Los Angeles Angels, the moniker the team was known by in the early 1960s, when it actually played in Los Angeles. The city of Anaheim says that this would violate the terms of the deal signed back in 1996, when the city chipped in $40 million for stadium renovations, and in exchange the team's then-owners, Disney, agreed to rename the then-California Angels as the Anaheim Angels.

Confused yet? Then hang onto your caps, because the cavalcade of names isn't over yet. Noticing that the team's lease doesn't actually require the name Anaheim Angels, but only says that the team name must "include the name Anaheim therein," Moreno proposed redubbing the team the "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim." Now you're just being ridiculous, replied city officials - who then charged the team with already being in violation of its lease by removing the name "Anaheim" from the team's uniforms and promotional materials.

"There's been a systematic stripping of the name Anaheim," city attorney Jack White (different Jack White) told the L.A. Times. "We didn't get the benefit of what we paid for." Legal experts don't seem to think the city has much of a case; as one told the Times: "If the city drafted it and didn't put in exactly what they wanted, it's the old slap against the forehead — oops! Courts usually don't give the benefit of the doubt to whoever drafted it in an ambiguous way."

D.C. council could still kayo stadium

Finally someone has noticed what I pointed out here back in October: that once the new D.C. council takes office next month, it has the power to refuse to issue the $530 million in Washington Nationals stadium bonds that the outgoing council approved last week. This would require a nine-vote supermajority on the council (to override a certain veto by Mayor Anthony Williams), but given that six remaining councilmembers voted against the stadium bill, and the three new members are all stated opponents of the bill, it's still a possibility. A repeal vote could be held at any time before the bonds are actually sold, which isn't expected to happen until May at the earliest.

December 29, 2004

Williams cuts Nationals check

Say goodnight, Youppi. D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams today signed the stadium bill passed by the city council last week, making the conversion of the Montreal Expos to the Washington Nationals all but official - oh, and committing the city to sell $535 million worth of bonds (plus up to $50 million in cost overruns) to pay for the thing, more than 80% of which will be paid back out of public coffers.

And nobody bothered to mention this last week, but apparently the bill also includes that $450 million "community development fund" that was proposed by Williams in October, to be funded by tax-increment financing on development surrounding the new stadium. As I've noted here previously, TIF revenues are notoriously hard to predict, and this one would be six times the size of D.C.'s largest previous TIF plan, so it's anyone's guess what will actually come of it - or how D.C. would pay off the community development bonds if the TIF money doesn't roll in as expected.

NJ pol: Jets stadium would stink

U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) has asked the federal Environmental Protection Agency to get involved with the New York Jets stadium scrum, charging that a proposed Manhattan football stadium could subject the Garden State to increased traffic tieups and increased sewage dumping in the Hudson River. New York City Commissioner of Snippy Comebacks Jennifer Falk responded: "It's not surprising that someone representing the state which the Jets are trying to leave would be opposed to our building the New York Sports and Convention Center." No reply yet from the EPA, but Lautenberg probably shouldn't get his hopes up, since it's not like the agency has made clean water a priority of late.

December 28, 2004

Taxing questions

If you ever wonder why it's so hard to get a solid figure for sports stadium subsidies - I've started resorting to saying, "$2 billion a year nationwide, give or take a billion" - just consider this news item: The San Francisco Giants have asked that their privately-owned stadium, SBC Park, be reassessed for property-tax purposes, so as to reduce the team's annual tax bill. Giants execs argue (correctly) that stadiums tend to have a short shelf life, so should be considered to depreciate quickly; critics argue (correctly) that with San Francisco real estate prices soaring, it's hard to imagine that a popular (and lucrative) tourist attraction is hemorrhaging value; I'd add (correctly) that the short shelf life of stadiums is more a matter of politics (i.e., team owners keep demanding new ones) than engineering or economics. So if the Giants get their tax break, is that a subsidy? Or would keeping the higher tax rate be unfair to the team? If you think you know, contact these guys.

A less difficult case is the one unfolding in Tampa, where the Tampa Bay Lightning just got a $632,000-a-year gift from the city, in the form of a full property-tax exemption on the St. Pete Times Forum, where the team plays. (In exchange, the Lightning promised to stay in Tampa for at least the next ten years, though the only penalty for leaving would be having to repay the lost tax revenue.) Already, according to the eponymous St. Pete Times, Tampa is facing demands from other local business owners for their own tax breaks, while the Tampa Yankees are expected to exercise a lease provision that lets them renegotiate their tax status if another local franchise gets a better deal. Hey, but at least Tampa Bay hockey fans can be assured of getting to see their favorite players take the ice - oh, wait.

December 27, 2004

NFL hedges on L.A.

Now that Bud Selig has hit the $580 million jackpot with his Montreal Expos extort-o-thon, the NFL may be the next to give the strategy a try. NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, doing his best Bob DuPuy impression, said last week that plans to pick a site for an L.A.-area NFL franchise by next May could be pushed back for several months:

"There are some things that have to get done in the next six months that conceivably might not get done in the next six months. It might take more like nine to 12 months. In that event, we could be pushed back into the fall of next year. But certainly our goal is to get some decisions made in May of '05."

Delaying a decision could have two benefits for the NFL. First off, by playing various sites against each other - current options include L.A., Anaheim, Carson and Pasadena - Tagliabue can force cities to up the ante while he hedges his bets, just as Selig did with the Expos for the better part of two years. More than that, though, since the NFL hasn't yet identified whether an existing or expansion franchise would go to Southern California, stalling the process lets existing teams continue to use the L.A. threat as leverage to get new stadiums. The San Diego Chargers, Indianapolis Colts, New Orleans Saints and Minnesota Vikings are all currently playing the L.A. card, so don't be surprised if things in SoCal drag out until at least a couple of those teams have landed new stadium deals.

Is anybody going to San Antone?

There hasn't been much lately on that San Jose Earthquakes-to-San Antonio rumor, but soccer does seem to be on the minds of city officials in the Texas city. The San Antonio Business Journal reports that Mayor Ed Garza has been passing around renderings of a 20,000-seat soccer stadium that would be used to lure an MLS franchise - though the team mentioned in this story is the Kansas City Wizards, part of Lamar Hunt's multi-team MLS empire. Soccer-only stadium cost estimates have typically run anywhere from $20 million to $110 million; San Antonio officials gave no indication how the stadium, if it were built, would be paid for.

December 24, 2004

When is $1 billion not $1 billion?

As regular readers of this website will recall, one of the many unknowns surrounding New York City's proposed Jets stadium and Nets arena projects is how much would be paid for development rights to the land, a pair of rail yards belonging to the cash-strapped Metropolitan Transportation Authority. (So cash-strapped, in fact, that the MTA has already announced subway and bus fare hikes not just for 2005, but 2006 as well.) Estimates of the land's value have ranged from a few hundred million dollars to several billion, and in July MTA chair Peter Kalikow announced he'd be hiring outside appraisers to determine how much the rail yards were worth.

In an attempt to puzzle out what's going on here, last month New York assemblymember Richard Brodsky questioned Kalikow at a hearing on the fare hikes. The exchange was recently transcribed by Brian Hatch of newyorkgames.org and passed along by John Fisher of hellskitchen.net:

ASSEMBLYMAN BRODSKY: How much have you budgeted next year for the sale of assets?

MR. KALIKOW: We put the sale of assets in our capital plan. ... In the capital plan for '05, already we have $1.4 billion.

ASSEMBLYMAN BRODSKY: What makes up that $1.4 billion?

MR. KALIKOW: It makes up, we assume, that Bruce Ratner is going to do the Net deal.

ASSEMBLYMAN BRODSKY: How much is that one?

MR. KALIKOW: We don't know yet. I'll tell you why -

ASSEMBLYMAN BRODSKY: If you got to $1.4 billion, you added up some numbers to get there -

MS. KATHERINE LAPP (MTA Executive Director): When we did the capital plan, which we sent up to the state last month, the Chairman told me to put in to the budget a target of a billion dollars of asset sales. He then told us, and we did, put out an RFP on the street for a real estate professional to come in and to catalogue all of the assets, the ones in Brooklyn, on the West Side, all the assets that we own and to determine and give us advice as to which ones they thought we could possibly sell, whether we needed it or not we would have to figure that out. He felt that an aggressive target of billion dollars should be put in the plan for that initiative. The extra $400 million that the Chairman just referred to, and you did, that's surplus income from the current plan, some investment income. So the assets sale target is a billion dollars.

ASSEMBLYMAN BRODSKY: You directed a one-billion-dollar number, fairly arbitrarily?

MR. KALIKOW: No, it was -

ASSEMBLYMAN BRODSKY: What do you guess the value of the Brooklyn deal is?

MR. KALIKOW: See, I don't know. I don't mean that to be a wise guy because the biggest problem that we can get into is ascribing values to stuff.

ASSEMBLYMAN BRODSKY: What do you think the value of the West Side deal is?

MR. KALIKOW: Again, I don't know.

ASSEMBLYMAN BRODSKY: When was the appraisal show?

MR. KALIKOW: It's not finished.

All righty, then. Once the MTA decides how much its land is worth, the next thing to figure out is who's going to pay them for it - deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff has said the MTA should take a city-funded new subway line in lieu of cash, while Kalikow and Governor George Pataki want either the teams or the city to cough up the dough. That billion-dollar budget hole could be turning into a two-billion-dollar budget hole in a hurry...

December 23, 2004

D.C. done deal not yet done

What, you thought that just because the Washington, D.C. council voted to approve a $580 million Nationals stadium bill this week, that meant the D.C. stadium debate was over? O ye of little historical perspective. As the Washington Post reports today, Mayor Anthony Williams skipped town for the holiday before signing the bill, which leaves open the teeny, tiny chance that the new council that takes office in January could vote to reconsider the bill before it takes effect.

At least one incoming rookie councilmember, Vincent Gray, told the Post that he doesn't intend to reopen the stadium discussion, saying, "I'm not out to create chaos for the sake of chaos." With the bill having passed by just one vote, only one of the three new members would need to join with the six incumbent no-voters to reverse the bill. There's also still the possibility that the council could simply refuse to issue the stadium bonds, but no one seems to be talking about that at the moment.

Transit delays for Jets stadium?

Now that's what was missing from the New York Jets stadium debate: Lawyers! And lots of 'em! Two separate lawsuits were filed against the multi-billion-dollar Hudson Yards redevelopment project yesterday, one by a coalition of West Side groups including Madison Square Garden owners Cablevision, the other by a pair of mass-transit advocacy groups. Both challenged the environmental impact statement for the project, saying it was based on faulty polling by the Jets that found 70% of fans would take mass transit to games. Most stadiums currently draw less than half their fans by mass transit or on foot, according to the New York Times, and even Madison Square Garden, in central Manhattan and sitting atop a transit hub, brings in only 52% of its fans by means other than automobiles.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office immediately responded by calling the Cablevision-connected lawsuit the work of "lying monopolists." The transit-advocacy groups, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and the Straphangers Campaign, did not receive an epithet of their own from the mayor.

Pigskin greenbacks

As if to make up for the conclusion of MLB's Expos relocation saga, yesterday was stadium-rumor day for the NFL, with several teams rattling various kinds of sabers:

NFL commish Paul Tagliabue told an L.A. Times reporter during a trip to Iraq - hey, they play football in Iraq, sort of - that he was displeased with the New Orleans Saints' stadium situation, saying it "doesn't look like it's any better today than it was a year ago. If anything, it looks worse." A Louisiana official dismissed Tagliabue's remarks as "another tactic to apply pressure to the state." Gov. Kathleen Blanco is expected to make another stadium-renovation pitch next month to Saints owner Tom Benson, who is one of several owners rumored to be looking at moving to Los Angeles if his stadium demands aren't met.
The New York Giants have opened talks with new New Jersey Gov. Richard Codey on a new $700 million stadium at the Meadowlands sports complex. Giants officials say they'd cover the entire construction cost if they can receive all revenues from the stadium; the state's role would be limited to providing the land, which the Giants might pay rent on. It sounds too good to be true - one unnamed local official pointedly compared it to "a certain other NFL team in a certain NFL city that's talking about figures that are astronomically higher" - and it would take an awful lot of new revenue to cover debt payments on $700 million, especially since the NFL's stadium loan fund wouldn't cover any of the bill. (The NFL will only help fund projects where there's a significant public share.) This one bears watching.
Indiana lawmakers may be concerned about Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson's $700 million public funding proposal for a new Colts stadium, but Colts owner Jim Irsay says the real victim is being overlooked: Colts owner Jim Irsay, who would be forced to give up his current lease provision that guarantees the Colts' revenue will be above the league median. "I'm giving up hundreds of millions of dollars of guarantees and committing $100 million to the project with no guarantees," said Irsay, who would be getting $52 million from the NFL toward the project in addition to nearly $700 million from the city. "There's no question that this is a risk for us and my franchise, but when the day was done I was willing to go forward and I was excited about it." Added Irsay: "I would have preferred a deal like Cincinnati, where there was no contribution from the club. I couldn't get that." You know, times are tough all over.

December 21, 2004

And that's the ballgame

This just in: The D.C. council has voted 7-6 to approve a stadium bill that could cost as much as $581 million, for the soon-to-be Washington Nationals. Reports the Washington Post: "After the vote, members of the audience, many wearing red Nationals caps, broke into a round of 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame.'" Rumors are thus far unconfirmed that MLB COO Bob DuPuy was also on hand, to sing his rendition of "Brother, Can You Spare 5.8 Billion Dimes?"

Another day, another $187 million

That didn't take long. Just one day after announcing plans to build a $500 million stadium for the Indianapolis Colts, Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson revealed that the total cost, including land acquisition, would be more like $687 million. Moreover, the Colts' $100 million contribution would really be just $52 million, since the city would be buying out $48 million worth of the team's current lease on the RCA Dome. Assuming all these figures hold, then, the city would be on the hook for more than 92% of the stadium costs - a split that Peterson called "a good deal" for both sides.

As for Peterson's slot-machine-based financing plan, neither the governor nor state legislative leaders sound too thrilled about it. Peterson, though, strongly defended his gambling plan, saying: "It's not my first choice, [but] the alternative in this case is, do you want the Colts to leave?" Okay, maybe strongly was the wrong word...

One more note on this story. Apologies in advance for picking on the Indianapolis Star again, but this paragraph jumped out at me:

Mark Ganis, a Chicago-based sports consultant who has worked on more than a dozen stadium projects, called the Indianapolis plan creative, for avoiding existing public money. Although the city is committing more public money than in many recent stadium deals, Ganis said that is the trend in smaller markets; those teams need more public money [to] remain financially competitive.

Okay, so teams in smaller markets need a bigger economic boost to compete with the big boys - makes sense, right? Except that Ganis leaves out one piece of the puzzle: Owners of small-market teams got to buy them at a discount, precisely because they're small market. So while the potential revenues from a city like Indianapolis might indeed be less than, say, New York - though, given football's revenue-sharing system, actually not all that much less - that doesn't necessarily mean that the Colts owners' return on investment is going to be any worse. It's the kind of argument that helps bamboozle local elected officials, though - not to mention local journalists on a deadline.

Long National nightmare nearly over?

Looks like it could be all over but the shouting. Last night at 11:10 pm, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams and council chair Linda Cropp announced that they'd reached a compromise on a $581 million stadium deal, paving the way for the Montreal Expos to become the Washington Nationals. The new provisions, which were reportedly signed off on by MLB:

Cropp's demand that 50% of the stadium construction costs ($140 million) be "privately financed" is now a suggestion, not a requirement - the stadium bill will stand regardless of whether private financing is found. This was the main holdup for MLB, which wanted a guarantee it would get its stadium one way or another, and didn't especially care how it was paid for. (Well, didn't care so long as the name on the invoice wasn't "Bud Selig and Friends.") The private-financing aspect was already pretty darned nebulous; making it so that D.C. will build the stadium regardless makes it essentially meaningless.
In exchange, MLB agreed to lift its demand for a $19 million late fee if the new stadium isn't ready for Opening Day 2008. Instead, the city would let the Nationals play at the existing RFK Stadium rent-free for that year, a cost of about $5 million to the city. The Washington Times also reports that "MLB and the city now will share equally all insurance premiums to protect against cost overruns," though it's not clear how much cost-overrun insurance would run.

In short, everybody blinked, resulting in a deal that dissident councilmember Adrian Fenty accurately summed up as "materially the exact same thing the mayor sent over. It's a publicly financed stadium with less risk, but still a publicly financed stadium." Unless something unexpected happens at the city council today - and who could imagine anything like that happening? - the Washington Nationals will soon become a reality, just as 33% of Field of Schemes readers accurately predicted. Disappointed baseball boosters in Portland, Norfolk, Las Vegas and on that floating platform off the coast of Scotland, you'll have to wait for another day - just remember to have a half-billion dollars or so in your bank account for if and when baseball comes knocking.

December 20, 2004

Indy gambles on Colts stadium

I don't know what you look for in a mayor, but for me the most important thing is showmanship. And in this category, all city pols must bow down to Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson, who made the official announcement of his $500 million, retractable-roofed Colts stadium proposal on the field of the RCA Dome before yesterday's sold-out Colts game. "We have a deal!" shouted the mayor, as he and Colts owner Jim Irsay thrust their arms roofward. (The crowd let out an apathetic sigh. No, seriously, what do you think they did?)

With the important matter of how much money Peterson wants to throw at Irsay settled, now only details remain - like where to find $500 million. The mayor's plan would have the Colts kicking in $100 million in cash, with the other $400 million coming from the proceeds of legalizing slot machines in Indianapolis. The Indiana legislature would need to approve the plan, and its prospects there are uncertain. A slot-machine bill failed in the legislature last year, and Assemblymember Michael Murphy told the Indianapolis Star: "A downtown casino would be controversial because it's a clear expansion of gambling. I'm sure the riverboats would fight it." The Indiana Coalition Against Legalized Gambling isn't real thrilled about it either.

December 19, 2004

Leggo my ego

There's a truly amazing article by Lori Montgomery in today's Washington Post, recounting the battle of MLB's stadium dealings with D.C., a tale frought with miscommunication and hubris. Some of the highlights:

Last year, when Williams suggested that the city would be willing to build a ballpark by using two-thirds public funding and one-third of the money coming from the team, The Washington Post reported that Reinsdorf responded: "Two-thirds/one-third is fine. But three-thirds/no-thirds is more of what we had in mind."...

Convinced they were fighting to keep alive their bid, D.C. officials gave Major League Baseball "the sweetest of sweetheart deals," in the words of one prominent baseball executive. The team would get a free ballpark, the right to choose its location and nearly all the revenue, including tens of millions of dollars from naming rights.

News of the deal "spread through baseball like wildfire," said the executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It really was too good," he said, laying the foundation for a public backlash.

One of the hallmarks of Bud Selig's reign as baseball commissioner is that he's a shrewd bargainer but a horrible diplomat. Selig may have miscalculated here, as kicking in even a few tens of millions of dollars - which would amount to a million or two per MLB team - at a key moment could almost certainly have gotten a deal done. For the man who cancelled the World Series and but for the grace of Judge Sonis Sotomayor would have started a season with scab players, though, it's always nose-to-spite-your-face season.

If this is true, baseball owners are even bigger dimwits than we've been giving them credit for. Everybody on the planet knew that MLB, seeing the new stadium-funding-hostile council on the horizon, was rolling the dice by cutting a deal with Mayor Anthony Williams before stadium legislation was passed in the council; hell, it was the council's refusal to pass a stadium deal before the team was awarded that had held up the award of the team to D.C. for almost two years. If MLB really bought Williams' promises that he could muster the votes for whatever baseball demanded, no problem, then they truly have only themselves to blame for what transpired.

Another place where MLB apparently badly miscalculated. In the face of a $400-million-plus stadium subsidy, a $19 million late fee (no baseball stadium in recent memory has opened more than one season late once construction started) is a mere drop in the bucket. Once it was clear that this was the straw that broke Linda Cropp's back, MLB officials could have quickly moved to renegotiate that provision - instead, Bob DuPuy drew a line in the sand and ordered Cropp to toe it.

As for what happens now, while there are rumors of a possible meeting between Cropp and MLB, the rhetoric is all still on orange alert: DuPuy reiterated yesterday that "we have no intention of extending the [December 31] deadline. We have a few options, but we're not even going to look at that until the deadline comes and goes." The top option, according to ESPN's Peter Gammons: Pulling the team out of D.C.'s RFK Stadium, and instead moving it to Norfolk's Harbor Park, a Triple-A facility that would be hard-pressed to meet major-league standards by Opening Day. Of course, this is coming from Peter Gammons, a man who never met an unattributed rumor he didn't like; it's also a bit hard to take seriously an article that refers to RFK Stadium as home to the NFL's Washington Redskins and to the MLB commissioner as "Bug Selig."

Reports of the death of Harrison, N.J.'s soccer stadium appear to have been exaggerated. According to the Newark Star-Ledger, under a new deal in the works, "the [state] sports authority, the town of Harrison and the MetroStars would evenly divide the costs of building an $84 million stadium beside the Passaic River." The state would get a cut of parking, concessions, advertising and naming rights revenues, plus a ticket tax surcharge, to pay back its share of the cost; it's unclear what if anything the city of Harrison, which is expected to use tax-increment financing for its share of the project, would get out of the deal.

When the city of Seattle agreed to pay $74 million towards a $120 million renovation of the Sonics' Seattle Coliseum (now the Key Arena) in 1995, it was promised that the costs would be repaid by revenues from the arena itself. Well, that didn't work out so well: with the team struggling, the city's share of luxury suite and club seat sales has fallen, to the point where Seattle projects a $2.8 million shortfall on this year's bond payments alone.

With the Sonics losing money as well, the city and the team appear ready to ask for a bailout from their common woes - from taxpayers in Snohomish and Walla Walla. (Yes, I just like saying "Snohomish and Walla Walla.") The latest plan: Ask the state for revenues from the hotel and sales taxes that are being used to pay for the Seahawks' Qwest Field and the Mariners' Safeco Field, once those buildings are paid off. That won't be until the year 2018, but Seattle could still sell bonds based on those future revenues, and use the cash to pay off the previous arena bonds - and to give the arena its second facelift in its 21-year life.

As the Seattle Times reports: "Taxpayers financed a $74 million renovation of KeyArena nine years ago. But [Sonics VP Terry] McLaughlin said that wasn't enough to make the facility competitive in today's market." (Field of Schemes readers will recall that "competitive," in team-speak, is code for "we're not making as much money as we could be.") It continued: "He noted that Portland's Rose Garden, home of the NBA's Trail Blazers, cost $268 million and is much larger." Of course, the Sonics aren't selling out Key Arena now, so it's unclear how a bigger arena would help them - unless maybe that "much larger" remark is really about something else entirely.

More bullet points from the Montshington Natpos brouhaha, while my crack headline-writing team runs out to buy a jumbo box of Youppi! puns:

The mystery of the missing $950 million may be one step closer to being solved. On Wednesday, New York deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff told the Bond Buyer that (in the Bond Buyer's words) "he believes there are sufficient PILOT payments and other fees paid to the city to back bonds to finance both a $300 million subsidy to the Jets stadium and a $350 million subsidy to the Javits [convention center] expansion."

Doctoroff has hinted at using PILOTs (payment in lieu of taxes, basically fees that developers agree to pay the city in exchange for property tax breaks) before, but the Bond Buyer article hints at where they might come from. After getting told off by state assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, Doctoroff agreed not to use PILOT funds from the city's largest collector of the fees, the Battery Park City Authority. But another quasi-public agency, the Industrial Development Agency, hands out $128 million in property-tax exemptions a year, according to the city Independent Budget Office. Of what comes back from developers, some of the money is committed to pay debt service on development bonds, and some goes for IDA administrative costs. The remaining $46 million a year is currently passed through to the city's general fund.

Since the IDA budget is controlled by the mayor's office, not the city council, what's to stop Mayor Michael Bloomberg from telling the city treasury: Sorry, we've decided that instead of giving our PILOT money to you, we're going to go build a football stadium? The answer is, well, no one seems to be sure. Finance experts at both the IBO and public-subsidy watchdog Good Jobs New York (who are hip-deep in IDA arcana) said they couldn't tell whether the IDA - which is part of a complex net of quasi-governmental agencies and sub-agencies that control much of the city's development spending - is contractually obligated to pass through to the city the PILOTs it collects, or if it can choose to go spend them all on football stadiums, or, for that matter, junkets to Aruba. It would apparently be unprecedented, anyway; neither IBO nor Good Jobs spokesfolks could remember a previous case where the IDA siphoned off PILOTs for an unrelated construction project.

Of course, as the Bond Buyer also notes, New York City deputy budget director Alan Anders testified last July that the city's stadium subsidy would come solely from "revenue streams [that] are currently not supporting the city budget." Clearly, the IDA's PILOT surplus is currently going directly into the city treasury, so spending that instead on the stadium and convention center would blow a $46 million a year hole in the budget. The IDA PILOTs may or may not be a slush fund waiting to happen, but it's going to take some awfully fast dancing by Doctoroff to grab it without his administration getting caught in a $650 million lie.

MLB may be drawing a line in the sand over the D.C. stadium deal, but council chair Linda Cropp still wants to reopen talks. "I would like to have [a meeting with MLB officials and Mayor Anthony Williams], so the mayor and the chairman of the council can be together, trying to get a better deal and not us saying something different," Cropp said today on WTOP radio. "I don't want the deal to be over. If I wanted it to be over, I would have voted with six of my colleagues who decided the deal was to be over." Among the items that Cropp wants to discuss, in addition to the issue of private financing: Who'll pay for cost overruns, and how much D.C. would have to pay in late fees if its stadium didn't open in time for the 2008 season opener.

Meanwhile, Mayor Williams was going on ESPN's Outside the Lines to defend his stadium plan as "not the world's greatest deal." Er, say what?

As for that mysterious "private financing" provision it's increasingly clear that it means just that: private financing, not necessarily private simoleons. More than a dozen would-be financiers have approached D.C. in the last two days to get in on the stadium deal, but these investors would need to be paid back eventually, either by the city or by MLB. One online poker company, for example (which I won't name because online poker companies like to spam my comments fields), got its website in the paper by offering to buy naming rights to the stadium, even though Mayor Williams previously promised 100% of naming-rights revenue to the building's tenants.

Said councilmember Jack Evans: "These entities all want something to recoup their money, and I'm not sure what we can really offer." Not so loud, Jack! Somebody might figure out that this is a lousy deal.

I've heard at least one (second-hand) report that MLB has contacted D.C. officials looking to broker a deal that will both satisfy Cropp and ensure Bud Selig that he'll get his "'$581 million off one stadium' coupon," as councilmember Adrian Fenty called it on Tuesday. Given Selig's lack of viable alternatives, it certainly makes sense for him to look for a way to salvage what would still be an incredibly lucrative deal for MLB - but then, calm thinking in the heat of battle has never exactly been the watchword of the Selig administration.

Besides, as sports economist Robert Baade noted to the Post, while putting up even $140 million in private money would be "in the middle of the road" as far as recent baseball stadium deals go, agreeing to grant concessions to D.C. now "wouldn't set a good precedent for them. Major League Baseball has a tough decision to make here."

Looks like somebody's come to play hardball. Of course, given that MLB really has no other good options for the ex-Expos, it'll be very interesting to see what happens if the council (read: Linda Cropp) calls DuPuy's bluff.

After all the twists and turns that the Washington, D.C. stadium controversy has taken, we should have known it wouldn't end simply. Last night, after 13 hours of contentious debate over what was to be the final vote on building a publicly funded stadium for the Washington Nationals (nee Montreal Expos), the D.C. council voted 7-6 to approve the $580 million stadium bill.

Except that half an hour earlier, council chair Linda Cropp had thrown the entire proceedings into confusion with an unexpected amendment that would require $140 million - half the construction cost of the stadium itself, not counting land and infrastructure - to be privately financed, or else the stadium would not be built. Cropp, who held the deciding vote in the tightly divided council, said she'd vote against the overall stadium bill unless her amendment was approved; the council then voted 10-3 to add the private-money provision, with hard-line pro-baseball councilmembers Jack Evans, Harold Brazil and Vincent Orange the only dissenters.

As to what this "private financing" provision actually means, no one seems exactly clear. Previously Cropp had proposed a non-binding option that meant only private financing, not private funding; while a private investor would have borrowed the money, it still would have been paid off by using public tax revenues. Last night, though, Cropp seemed to imply that she was now seeking private funds, not just private financing, saying: "My basic belief is that there are too many public dollars going into this. This will make the mayor seek private dollars more than anything else."

Still, the uncertainty surrounding Cropp's amendment had MLB officials scurrying to decide their next move. Nationals/Expos president Tony Tavares told the Washington Post that a planned event to introduce the team's uniforms this afternoon would likely be cancelled. Media speculation ran rampant about what MLB would do now, with some suggesting the team would play in Washington for 2005 while baseball re-opened the city search process. Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell, meanwhile, threw a full-on hissy fit in today's paper, charging that: "The question of whether baseball will now jerk its franchise out of Washington is not a question at all. It is a foregone conclusion."

Evans, who's spearheaded the stadium push on the council, seemed not to know how to react himself, first lashing out at Cropp, "Without that guarantee [of a publicly funded stadium], I don't see baseball staying here," and suggesting that "we'll have until the end of the year to change this" provision. (The council has another meeting scheduled for next Tuesday.) By this morning, though, Evans was telling WTOP news radio that the private-financing provision is "not by any means a deal-breaker" and "it's not something we can't deal with as we go forward." As usual with this whole Expos-to-D.C. saga, only one thing's for sure: No one knows.

Linda Cropp's price has been set, according to today's Washington Post. The D.C. council chair says she's now "very positive" about casting the deciding vote for a Washington Nationals stadium, after MLB delivered a 2-1/2 page letter outlining items it would be willing to renegotiate. Among those items, according to the Post: More free tickets for city kids, and an increase in the number of days a year the city would get to use its own ballpark. Cropp also says she plans to introduce an amendment today capping the total stadium cost at $555 million - or rather, forcing the city to look at other sites if the price comes in at more than $555 million - though it's unclear whether MLB has signed off on that.

The council is presumably debating the stadium bill as I type this, but I haven't been able to find an Internet feed of the proceedings. I'll add an update here if I do.

It's time for today's Adventures in Journalistic Innumeracy! Today's guests are Matthew Tully and John Fritze of the Indianapolis Star, who dutifully report that a study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the city of Indianpolis finds that a new Colts stadium would be a "boon" for the city, since it would "pump an additional $30 million into the economy each year."

Okay, but what does that mean? The $30 million is in what economists call "economic activity," which just means money spent within city limits - even if the Colts just raise ticket prices 10%, that's a 10% increase in "activity." The important figure from a fiscal standpoint is how much new tax revenue will come from all this spending - i.e., what's the public's cut of the take?

So that's an increase of - journalists, dust off your calculators - $1.2 million a year in tax revenue. From a project that would cost an estimated $700 million, or something like $40 million a year in bond payments. Can you subtract $40 million from $1.2 million? Hint: The little dash in front of that number means it's a "negative."

The Star reporters further note that the stadium is projected to create 400 new permanent jobs; they fail to note that at $700 million in public expense, this would amount to $1.75 million per new job created, which would set an all-time record for the worst job-creation ratio in economic development history. You maybe want to rewrite your lede now, guys?

New York state assembly speaker took another baby step toward opposing the Jets stadium plan this weekend, telling local cable news channel NY1 that if he had to vote on it today, he'd vote against it. Said Silver of the multi-billion-dollar Hudson Yards redevelopment plan of which the stadium is one piece: "We are going to create 20 million square feet of commercial space in midtown Manhattan to compete with the business looking for space downtown. That's the real question, and that commercial development is really the threshold of the financing of that stadium."

Silver is conflating two different legislative items a bit here: The 20 million square feet (really 28 million, but what's eight million square feet among friends?) of new development comes from the $2.8 billion Hudson Yards project that's now wending its way through the city land-use approval process (the first city council hearings began today, and a vote on rezoning is expected next month), while the $1.4 billion Jets stadium would go through a separate, as yet undetermined approval process. Does this mean Silver plans to try to block the greater Hudson Yards plan as bad for downtown development, in addition to opposing the stadium itself? Tune in next time to find out, on "Inside Shelly's Brain."

(Thanks to newyorkgames.org for picking up on this story, which seems to have eluded the rest of the New York media.)

It's not an easy trick to pull off, but the Florida Marlins have done it: come up with a never-before-used excuse for demanding a new stadium. This weekend, Marlins landlord (and former owner) Wayne Huizenga announced that the team would be evicted from their digs at Pro Player Stadium, effective ... six years from now.

Okay, that last bit still needs some work, as threats go. Still, it was enough to make headlines across the nation - the "surprising twist adds even more urgency to the Marlins' attempts to resolve their longterm future," wrote the Miami Herald - and presumably put the screws on any Florida state legislators who might have been hoping the team's stadium subsidy demands could be put off for another legislative session. Marlins step-exec David Samson declared the team to be "a millimeter away" from getting a Miami stadium deal finalized, which makes one wonder why he needed to fly 3,000 miles last week to scare Floridians into getting it done.

In any case, the eviction story seems dubious on the face of it. Huizenga claims he only makes about $1 million or so off of Marlins games each year, but that's hard to believe, given that the team has one of the most extortionate leases on the planet. Add in that a Pro Player exec insisted that booting the Marlins would allow them to rent out more dates for soccer and cricket - I mean, come on, cricket? - and you have to wonder how much the Marlins are paying off their landlord to help with the stadium p.r.

Stop the presses! MLB has tentatively agreed to a concession on its stadium deal with Washington, D.C.! Is it the issue of who will pay for the inevitable cost overruns? Of whether D.C. will be socked with late fees if the stadium isn't ready by Opening Day 2008? Of combat pay for ticketholders who have to watch Cristian Guzman imitate a major-league shortstop for the next four years?

No, no, none of those. It's ... no, I'm too excited. Let's let the Baltimore Sun do the honors:

Well, that's a relief. A spokesperson for D.C. council chair Linda Cropp called news of the concession "like going from second base to third," saying this issue "was one of the biggies for the chairman." If this turns out to be Cropp's price for voting for the stadium bill, it's going to be a bit of a disappointment - me, I would have at least held out for the matryoshkas.

For a billionaire, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg certainly has an, uh, interesting idea of financial principles. During his weekly anti-Cablevision radio address, Bloomberg lashed out at ads critical of his $1.4 billion Jets stadium plan, saying they're wrong to say that the $600 million public price tag would come at the expense of raises for city workers. "It is against the law to borrow money to pay our employees," raged the mayor, noting that the money would be raised through bond sales. "We can't do that, it's against the law."

Yes, but bonds are part of a complicated financial instrument known to economists as "debt." Debt, as anyone familiar with those newfangled devices known as "credit cards" could tell you, needs to be paid off with "cash." Unless Bloomberg plans to start running off $20 bills on his inkjet printer, that money needs to come from somewhere in the city's (sorry for all the technical language here) "budget."

In other mayoral huff-related news, Bloomberg announced this week that he's no longer attending Knicks games because of his anger at Cablevision, their corporate parent. Not that he's given up his seats, mind you - he's just been sending his daughters instead. Yeah, that'll show 'em.

Anyone who had December 8 in the "When will the Florida Marlins make an overt move threat" pool: You are a winnah! Marlins execs met with Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman (not actually pictured in that hotlink) yesterday, in a meeting that city officials insisted was about a possible MLB expansion franchise one day coming to town. Marlins spokesperson Bruce Rubin, meanwhile, would say only: "The Marlins are a baseball team and Las Vegas is a city seeking a baseball team." I think we can all read between the lines there.

If any of you have Las Vegas in the "Where will the Marlins end up playing?" pool, you're wasting your money - as a Washington Post expose revealed this summer, Las Vegas' stadium finance plan is smoke and mirrors at best. The Vegas junket was enough to rile up Miami officials, though, with Miami mayor Manny Diaz declaring himself "shocked, disturbed, disappointed, disgusted." Just the kind of adjectives that get legislators reaching for their subsidy pens!

Goodman told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he plans to meet with Marlins officials again at the baseball winter meetings this weekend, saying, and I quote: "I asked them if they were married, and if I should bring the showgirls along with me." I think we can definitely read between the lines there.

So it turns out that International Facilities Group, MLB's favorite stadium consulting company, has more ties to the Chicago White Sox than merely having Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf's son Michael as co-director. The other co-director, you see, is Terry Savarise - who, as a visit to the IFG website reveals, just happens to be vice-president of stadium operations for both the White Sox and Reinsdorf's Chicago Bulls.

So to recap: Jerry Reinsdorf, in his role as MLB's franchise relocation chief, negotiated a contract that requires Washington, D.C. to pay $3 million to a company run by his son and by one of his top executives. That's not the sort of thing that most corporate bigwigs could get away with - but then, baseball is a special kind of industry.

New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is making it absolutely clear: He's not absolutely clear on his position on a new New York Jets stadium in Manhattan. "The jury is still out on the stadium," said Silver at yesterday's signing ceremony for the Javits Convention Center expansion bill. "I'm looking to be convinced that it's the right thing to do for the city - plain and simple." With it still uncertain what elected officials if any will be voting on the stadium deal, Silver, who holds veto power as a member of the state Public Authorities Control Board, could be the key player in giving the projects the thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

Speaking of the Javits expansion, everyone who reported on the state's passage of the bill - including me - seemed to have forgotten about the fact that $350 million in city money for the project is still unaccounted for. Asked where the city would be coming up with this cash, two city officials (and one state) responded with variations on "That's an excellent question." The mystery of Dan Doctoroff's missing billion dollars grows ever more mysterious...

When you're talking about a $614 million stadium, it's easily lose track of where some of those lesser millions are going. In the case of the planned Washington Nationals stadium, according to today's Washington Post, $3.7 million in city money will go to pay for MLB's chosen stadium consultant. The leading candidate: the International Facilities Group, a consulting firm run by Michael Reinsdorf. Totally coincidentally, Michael's dad is Jerry Reinsdorf, who owns the Chicago White Sox - and as head of baseball's relocation committee, was MLB's chief negotiator on the stadium deal.

Needless to say, D.C. councilmembers opposed to the stadium deal were not pleased to hear about this latest wrinkle. "That's absolutely worrying," said Adrian Fenty, noting that the city would already be on the hook for $6.1 million for its own project manager. "It just runs contrary to basic common sense. Why in the world would we pay for their consultants?" (Future historians will note this as the first and only time that "common sense" will be referenced with regard to the D.C. stadium deal.)

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for council chair Linda Cropp, who has gone from backing the stadium deal to opposing it to backing it to abstaining from last week's vote, said yesterday that "she certainly feels her concerns are being heard. Everybody seems to be heading in the same direction." Yesterday WTOP radio reported that D.C. officials weren't even going to meet with MLB before next Tuesday's final stadium vote; today the Washington Post reported D.C. sports commission chief Mark Tuohey as saying that discussions are "ongoing" and that he's "hopeful we'll come to some resolution that will be productive for Tuesday's vote."

Believe who you want, but I'd put my money on some sort of face-saving gesture that will enable Cropp to claim she got concessions, without actually costing MLB anything. Maybe if the stadium goes over budget, all Nationals fans will get 5% off all Larry Parrish matryoshka dolls at the MLB store.

Though the Javits expansion hasn't garnered nearly the opposition that the accompanying Jets stadium proposal has, it's arguably just as dumb an idea at twice the public price - as convention expert Heywood Sanders has noted, it's not like there's a huge number of conventions out there willing to rush to New York if only they had more room to rattle around in. (Though the Times did note that the American Association of Orthodontists has "a tentative agreement" to hold its convention at an expanded Javits ... in the year 2013. Woohoo?)

There are rumors that a Brooklyn Nets arena Memorandum of Understanding could be on its way, perhaps as soon as this week. Until then, I'll be enjoying the respite.

Give the old used-car salesman his due: Bud Selig knows how to close a deal. Major League Baseball owners voted 29-1 today to approve the relocation of the Montreal Expos to Washington, D.C. - three guesses who cast the lone "no" vote. The catch: The approval is contigent on D.C. meeting the terms of the Baseball Agreement signed by Mayor Anthony Williams and MLB back in September - which presumably means Selig will, as he indicated yesterday he would, tell D.C. "it's my way or the highway" if the council tries to renegotiate any part of that deal. Not that he really has any options at this point other than D.C., but "We've already done all the paperwork, all you have to do is sign it" is a tried-and-true sales pitch.

Next up: A probable lawsuit from Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos (answer to our trivia question above) to block the move, unless Selig provides him with a sufficient cut of the action.

Just when you thought it was safe to order those Washington Nationals miniplans: Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos still hasn't agreed with MLB on the insanely lucrative buyout he'd get for signing off on the Expos' D.C. move, and now there's talk of a potential lawsuit if he isn't paid off, and fast. Admittedly, not talk by Angelos himself, but by the governor of Maryland, who told WBAL radio: "Peter was led to believe by baseball officials that negotiations would be fruitful and complete by this time. This could end up in court in the relatively short term." Angelos, you will recall, doesn't actually have territorial rights to D.C.; you will further recall that he's also pretty much the biggest-shot lawyer around, so if he wants to drag things out - or threaten to in order to get his boodle - you can be damn sure he can do it.

Back on the stadium-funding front, meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams "has pledged to reopen talks with Major League Baseball officials about portions of a stadium-financing agreement, but that meeting likely would come after the D.C. Council takes its final vote on the plan Dec. 14." Yeah, I can just see how that meeting's going to go:

LATE NOTE: Selig is now saying that he's not gonna renegotiate nuthin nohow: "We have made a deal. Certainly, you have every right to expect that we'll live up to our end of the deal. So, you know, a deal's been made, and I'm satisfied that the deal that both sides agreed to will take place." He added that an MLB owner vote to approve the Expos' move to D.C. could come tomorrow; Selig desperately wanted it to be unanimous, but Angelos is likely to put the kibosh on that.

One of the main arguments against spending $600 million in public money on a Manhattan stadium for the New York Jets has been that the money, and land, could be better used for other projects. No one, however, had done an analysis of alternative uses for the site - until now.

Earlier today, the non-profit Regional Plan Association released an economic analysis of what would happen if New York used the West Side rail yards for apartment complexes, instead of a stadium. Their conclusion: Given the intense demand for housing in Manhattan, a mixed-use development would generate almost seven times as much revenue for the city as even the Jets say a stadium would. According to the RPA report (available for download here):

The Hudson Yards Coalition, a group led by local development interests, responded by calling the RPA the "Regional Fantasy Association" and shouting "La la la la la, we can't hear you!" (Hint: One of the preceding statements is true.) No comment yet from city officials; given the likelihood that affordable housing will be a major issue in the upcoming mayoral race, though, the RPA report could make for some mighty interesting lines of questioning at this month's city council hearings.

D.C. mayor Anthony Williams' Washington Nationals stadium bill didn't get the seven votes it needed for passage by the city council yesterday - but it passed nonetheless. That's because three councilmembers, fence-straddling council chair Linda Cropp and previous stadium opponents Kathy Patterson and Phil Mendelson, voted "present" on the stadium measure, making the six "yes" votes enough for a majority of voting members. (As Maury Brown of SABR's Business of Baseball committee notes, that's 6-4-3 if you're scoring at home.)

The bizarre ending came at the end of a day-long meeting on the stadium plan, during which the council:

Once the vote was won, however, Williams - who cancelled a trip to Indianapolis to attend the council meeting, later observing, "I actually ran out and did some errands while they were sitting there, which gave me a deeper experience of how much time they put in" - promptly told the council he'd be "willing to work with you" to make "workable" alterations to the MLB deal. Added the mayor, "Folks who are trying to make adjustments ... are not trying to kill baseball" - pretty much the exact opposite of what councilmember Jack Evans said during debate, when he charged Catania with trying to introduce "a poison bill designed to kill the deal."

So, what the heck just happened here? Some clues can be gleaned from the Washington Post's story on the day's events, which included this interesting scene:

Williams' post-vote turnabout, then, seems to have been his way of ensuring that Cropp wouldn't torpedo the bill by voting against it. (He had to wait until after the vote to say so, because admitting beforehand that the baseball agreement was no longer sacred would have left Evans & Co. with no reason for rejecting Fenty and Catania's amendments out of hand.) And if Cropp had assured Williams that the bill would pass, the mystery of the Patterson and Mendelson abstentions could be solved as well: Cropp may have agreed to change her decisive vote from "yes" to "present" in exchange for Patterson and Mendelson joining her in the agnostic camp, thus preserving a win for the bill while maintaining at least the pretense that the council is keeping the pressure on the mayor to renegotiate with MLB.

After all this, there still has to be another vote, on December 14, before the deal becomes final. (I was mistaken earlier when I wrote that the two votes needed to be 30 days apart; it's actually 13 days.) With Cropp on board, it seems extremely unlikely that anything can stop the stadium bill now - but then if the last few weeks have shown anything, it's that with the D.C. council, anything is possible.

Thanks to Andrew Pate, Trevor Mills, Mason Brown, Brian Borawski, Diane Firstman, Josh Safran, Matthew J. Wiegand, Save Fenway Park!, the NYC 20-Never Campaign, and all our anonymous donors for their generous help in making this website possible. Drops of water turn the mill...